Storytelling in eLearning: The why and how. Every year, I have to complete training related to confidentiality policies (as a learner, not an as the instructional designer).
Most years, I think of the training as time wasted—I already know that I'm not supposed to blab confidential information to my friends and family. But last year, the training instructor opened with a story about a confidentiality breach caused by an employee checking his email in a cafe. As someone who often works on the go, that got my attention. Whether you design classroom training, eLearning, m-learning, or work with another medium entirely, storytelling is a learning tool that possesses the power to motivate, persuade, educate, and even entertain. If you're in the midst of developing an eLearning course with consecutive slides relaying concepts and guidelines, take up the challenge of redesigning those slides into an informational story.
Why Tell Stories? How Do I Write a Story? When asking probing questions, keep the basic elements of a story in mind. Instructional Design Guru.
Designing e-Learning for Maximum Motivation. These are my live blogged notes from the Designing e-Learning for Maximum Motivation webinar by Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactions.
Any typos, mistakes, incomplete thoughts, etc. are likely mine, not the presenter’s. My side comments in italics. Quick Summary of the Motivation Rules Say lessMore challengingDelay judgmentContent-rich feedbackLevels of difficultyLearner control Introduction “The goal of e-learning is to create meaningful performance change in the learner.” Organizations choose e-learning for other reasons (cost, access, etc.), but as an instructional designers, we’re focused on the performance change Assumptions about Learning Learning is activePeople learn best in highly particular waysLearners must actively construct meaning “Learning isn’t a transitive verb; I can’t “learn” you this.” Why should we care about motivation? Learner Motivation Cynical thoughts, but most learners aren’t intrinsically motivated Media/animation isn’t enough. What we want. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (9781400064281): Chip Heath, Dan Heath. Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving From Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere (Essential Knowledge Resource) (9780787976217): Allison Rossett, Lisa Schafer.
Questioning Gagné and Bloom’s Relevance. Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Lauren Hirsh.
Lauren needed to do an informational interview for her masters program, and I needed some new profile pictures. (The pictures turned out terrific; I’m sure I got the better end of the bargain.) During the interview, Lauren asked some very thoughtful questions about the relationship between theory and practice. I made this comment as part of the interview: It’s easy to get caught up in theories without really looking at whether the research support is there. As a follow-up question, she asked where I learned the above about Gagné and Bloom. Gagné’s Nine Events Besides criticisms like Gagne’s Nine Dull Commandments, the post that really made me rethink Gagné was Tom Werner’s Whatever You Do, Don’t Drop Practice (now only available as an archive via the Wayback Machine).
From Tom’s summary: Bloom’s Taxonomy What would you guess happened? The game almost immediately devolved into arguments over where the verbs belong. Reality Check. Big Dog, Little Dog. Toolkit: Tools, Tools, and More Tools by Joe Ganci. “Old ideas on how to learn are evolving as new technology enables us to increase our knowledge and productivity, as long as we take advantage of what science is bringing our way.
It’s an exciting time to be alive!” Right now, we are on the cusp of a shakeup within the eLearning tools industry. We're holding our breaths because the next few months will be key. There is so much going on right now that I thought it best this month to focus on trying to make sense of it all. Certainly, space won't allow me to cover everything that's happening, so feel free to add your own comments below to further inform your fellow eLearning developers about what's happening.
Flash vs. Yes, the controversy is real. There are legions of Flash developers out there. Add to that the fact that there are no good eLearning development tools that output HTML5 yet, no matter what some tool vendors report. On the other hand, the next twelve months will be very interesting. Updates and New Tools.